


Something There That Wasn't There Before

by theauthor2010



Series: The Kurtofsky Flash Fic Series [12]
Category: Glee
Genre: Beauty and the Beast, Comfort, Coming Out, M/M, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-08
Updated: 2011-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-19 03:46:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theauthor2010/pseuds/theauthor2010
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of the Kurtofsky Flash Fic Series. The challenge was to give a fic Beauty and the Beast undertones. I chose "something there that wasn't there before" as a theme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something There That Wasn't There Before

_Dave Karofsky was very good at comforting the hurt and abused._

Kurt learned this while watching him comfort Santana to the best of his ability.

Santana, who had recently been outed, had been victim of a particularly brutal attack. She had come to her locker at the end of the day, found the slurs left written there and started just bawling. Kurt paused in his tracks, saw the cruel, hateful words written in spray-paint on the locker and had immediately sprung to go comfort her. By the time he trekked through the thin end-of-the-day crowd, however, someone was already there and had both arms wrapped around her.

Dave leaned close and quickly drew her away from the mess. “It’s okay, ‘tana,” he mumbled quietly. “Just a bunch of dicks with nothing better to do.”

The scene of comfort caught him off guard and literally stopped him in his tracks. Dave was not only gentle and comforting but he handled the situation with a skill and grace totally unexpected of him. He immediately removed her from danger and calmed her hysteria. He did exactly what Kurt would have done if he had stumbled upon the ex-cheerleader in distress first.

“It’s still me David,” she snapped loudly. “I just-I don’t get why everyone thinks that I’m different because I like girls.”

“I know,” he comforted, rubbing her shoulder. “I know and you know but there are jerks in the world. I mean c’mon up until two weeks ago we were the jerks. It’s going to take time but high school’s almost over.”

“Thank god,” she exhaled.

“And at least you have Brittany and when you get out of here you’ll find good friends who don’t give a shit

She nodded slowly and looked up with forced smile. “I’m so tired Dave,” she said desperately.

“Well, school’s out so go home and get some rest,” he said gently. “I’ll run by Figgins’ office and let him know what happened. It’ll be okay.”

They parted ways and Kurt stared in awe. He had never expected this of Dave.

 _Dave’s father hadn’t been lying when he said his son was intelligent._

Kurt had always figured that the man had no idea what his son had become and had been fed a lot of lies. Dave was sincerely intelligent though. After he and Santana had vowed to end bullying at McKinley and shortly after the girl’s outing Dave had started to put his focus back into his school work. In their shared Algebra class, Mrs. Peterson asked a rather complex question. Nobody would raise their hand to come up to the board. Kurt was stumped too.

Dave had given a big sigh and then raised his hand. “I got it, Mrs. P,” he said. She nodded and he went up to the board and solved the equation without any effort at all.

Kurt watched him in shock and awe. Dave met his eyes as he returned back to his seat. He shrugged and then looked away. He could not believe that Dave had been hiding intelligence behind his brutish stupidity, but maybe it was just academic intelligence he was hiding. It couldn’t be the real thing, not at all. There was a huge difference between knowing how to solve a couple of difficult algebra problems and being smart.

There was no way that Dave Karofsky could be a well-spoken, intelligent human being.

 _Dave was a well spoken, intelligent human being. He was sweet and unsure and it was amazing._

Kurt learned this on the last day of his junior year when Dave finally apologized to him for all of the bullying, all of the torment and the kiss that had been stolen. He walked up to him one day, face bright red and eyes terrified. He stopped in front of Kurt and gaped like an idiot for a second before he finally opened his mouth to speak.  “Kurt,” he said. “Can we talk for a few seconds?”

Kurt had been so taken off guard by being confronted like that that all he could do was say “yes.”

Dave carefully walked him aside and then started talking. “I’m tired of who I am,” he said seriously. “I’m tired of pretending that I’m straight, pretending that I wanna hurt people and pretending that these things aren’t killing me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I hurt you. I’m sorry that I stole your first kiss and harassed you. I was scared you’d give away the secret that I had…that I had unintentionally given up when I kissed you. You had every right to.”

He looked down at the ground between them and smiled, sadly. “I guess I felt that I needed to torment you because you were different,” he said. “Santana told me that you represented all I could never be and well, she was right.”

He sighed a little bit. “Anyway, I’m coming out,” he whispered. “And I’m sorry.”

Over the following months Kurt would see the sadness, the bravery and the love in Dave Karofsky. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t seen it there before.


End file.
